


Nowhere Far Enough

by ingridmatthews



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Multi, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-03
Updated: 2010-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:24:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingridmatthews/pseuds/ingridmatthews
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Five Times Sherlock Ran Away From Home, One Time He Ran Back to It</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere Far Enough

His experiment was _perfectly_ sound.

The biscuits were shaped like animals. Like animals he herded them into sanitary, safe and pleasant areas in his bedroom to live in. He petted them frequently, played with them constantly and he only tried to dissolve them with chemicals on very rare occasions.

Eventually, when they became too dirty to play with ...

He ate them.

It was a _logical_ course of action! But his mother's shrill admonishments and his father's punishments were savage ruses to convince him otherwise.

So he ran away. Carrying his brother's valise, the one he'd used for his first year of school, Sherlock made his way to the village proper. Inside the suitcase was his hat, a pair of knickers and a dead lizard he'd found the previous month by the lake which he'd preserved with sunlight and salt.

He felt he'd be quite content out there in the wide world. He was six years old after all.

It was only the appearance on the street at midday of a man wearing a very large black hat and white gloves (not logical at all!) that convinced Sherlock to go home where his brother waited on the doorstep, pale and relieved. He handed back the valise silently and Mycroft said nothing of it, good brother that he was.

~*~

Sherlock was nine when he simply walked out the door during a family gathering, tired of dinner guests who were, frankly, too stupid to breathe.

His father was ready though. Waiting at the end of the walk with his belt in his hand.

Sherlock almost ... _almost_ kept moving forward. Unafraid.

But there was love and exhaustion behind the stern look in his father's eyes. He wasn't going to hit him, Sherlock knew this, but appearances had to be kept up. Society demanded it. Demanded the obedience of a child to its father. It was the way of the world, for all Sherlock wanted to rebel against such stupid, pointless notions.

But his father, well, he had no choice in the matter, did he?

So, for his sake, Sherlock turned around and walked back to the house.

Unafraid.

~*~

Sherlock's father died when he was fourteen. It was a sudden death, a single cry of pain and the light of life faded from the old man's eyes right before them, even as his purple lips struggled to say a few last words.

Mycroft was bent over the corpse, trying to force air into his flat lungs from his own mouth while their mother screamed and screamed, her mouth opened wide in a terrible 'o' of grief.

Sherlock might have helped. He might have assisted his brother in his attempts at restoring respiration. He might have tried to calm his mother or get the servants to fetch a doctor for naught.

But he did none of those things.

Instead he ran. Ran away from his house, as fast as his spindly legs could carry him. Running nowhere and everywhere at once. He kept going until he came to the outskirts of the village, where he lay down in the sod and wished he could be burned along with the stinking brown bricks, forgotten forever.

He didn't return home until the morning of the funeral where he bathed and dressed without a word, waiting until he was called forward to scoop a single shovel of earth onto his father's grave.

~*~

Victor Trevor told Sherlock he was leaving him -- and their love -- forever on the second to last week of holiday, one day short of Sherlock's nineteenth birthday.

And Victor, being Victor, stayed the entire remainder of the holiday, pretending he'd said nothing at all.

But Sherlock didn't pretend. He _couldn't_ pretend and this bothered him most of all. He took off during his birthday party, tearing away his coat and shirt as he ran, cursing and far too drunk.

He wept as he ran, for the first and last time. At least that's what he swore.

He fought with his bare fists for the first time that night as well, in the secret boxing club below the pub where he was bet upon by men too lost to care how long the odds were. Sherlock drank more, let himself be manhandled by strangers and it wasn't until his mother found him the next morning, asleep in the gutter half-naked, did he allow himself to be taken home.

He didn't weep again, not even when she whispered in his ear that she understood, that she loved him no matter what. That she _knew_ how badly he felt.

For that part of Sherlock, the part that could cry and feel, had run away, for good.

He said goodbye to Victor the next morning with a sincere smile and to his great relief, it was like saying goodbye to nothing at all.

~*~

He had everything in hand. His papers and enough money to spare. All was set.

Except that Mycroft kept staring at him balefully, not speaking his mind as usual, the bastard.

"We discussed this. Repeatedly," Sherlock growled, stuffing the packets into various pockets. "It is for the best."

"I'm not sure pretending you are dead is in anyone's interest, let alone Doctor Watson's," Mycroft replied in that slow, maddening way of his. "In fact, I believe that you are merely running away again, brother mine."

Holmes wanted to think that he had a perfect retort on his lips, but in truth, he didn't. He had nothing at all.

"It's for the best," he repeated wanly, trying to forget Watson's screams of grief that echoed over the falls, reminding him too much of his mother and the day his father died. "He needs his freedom."

Mycroft didn't reply.

~*~

He had been gone for three years that felt like three centuries.

Colonel Moran had chased him across snow-covered islands, through meadows of glass-sharp grass, past seas and time together. Sherlock Holmes ran away from him, running for his very life, not exactly sure why he'd bothered until now.

For the first time in his existence, Sherlock Holmes wanted to go home.

Home was Baker Street and the gas lamps at midnight, their dull light burning through the foggy windows. Home was Mrs. Hudson, serving him broth and fretting over his pale skin. Home was his unmade bed and his messy chemical table and a Persian slipper filled with shag.

Home was Watson. His beautiful and bright soul, shining for Holmes alone.

Home was so close he could almost taste it.

Holmes alighted from the train and ran toward the center of London, not caring that his disguise was flapping for all to see. He ran nearly all the way to Baker Street before he regained his sense and finally pulled himself together for one last, sweet, return home.

~*~  
end

Comments are always welcome. :D


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